Volvo is bringing two new connected car technologies to the U.S. market for the 2021 model year. The notification systems are Hazard Light Alert and Slippery Road Alert, and they will soon be standard equipment on 2021 Volvos.

Essentially, these are car-to-car communication technologies that allow new Volvos to “talk” to one another. They gather anonymous data from Volvos in the same geographic area and provide Volvo drivers with information about what might be around the next corner.

Hazard Light Alert activates when a Volvo driver turns on the hazard flashers, and Slippery Road Alert senses when the road surface slippery. As long as a 2021 Volvo model is connected to the internet, a signal is sent from the vehicle using the hazard flashers or traveling over the slippery road surface to a central service, which then relays these notifications to other 2021 Volvos in the same area.

Because Volvo is concerned about the safety of all drivers, regardless of the vehicle they own, this safety information will not remain within the company’s walls. Alongside the news that Volvo will bring these two features to its U.S. lineup, the automaker also announced a new partnership with mobility company Waycare Technologies.

Waycare Technologies will share the anonymized information with local traffic municipalities as well as the Waze navigation app (where enabled). However, Waycare data sharing is limited to places where the company’s traffic management platform is already up and running. That currently includes western Florida, Missouri, Nevada, North Caroline, central Ohio, the San Francisco Bay Area, Texas, and Utah.

Drivers who don't want their new 2021 Volvo to send or receive messages about these incidents can deactivate them at any time, but the head of Volvo Cars Safety Center, Malin Ekholm, said in a statement that sharing real-time data will help avoid accidents.

“Volvo owners directly contribute to making roads safer for other drivers that enable the feature, while they also benefit from early warnings to potentially dangerous conditions ahead,” she said. "The more vehicles we have sharing safety data in real time, the safer our roads become.”

Waycare collects information from a number of sources other than Volvo, including government transportation agencies, mobile apps, other connected vehicles, weather services, and event management systems. The company’s AI then processes all of this data to “produce actionable insights and predictions for traffic safety and congestion management,” the company says. The information is provided to U.S. transportation agencies, which then inform the public through the 5-1-1 transportation and traffic information telephone hotline, Waze, and other services.

Volvo first introduced Hazard Light Alert and Slippery Road Alert on its 90 Series of cars in 2016 in Sweden and Norway.